Vitamix Ascent Series Containers Explained

Vita­mix Ascent Series Con­tain­ers: All Ascent Series Vita­mix blenders (A2300, A2500, A3300, A3500, and Ven­tur­ist V1200) come with 64 oz. Wet (4″ blades) Self-Detect Low Pro­file Wide Bot­tom con­tain­ers. Over the last 2–3 years, Vita­mix also released a range of addi­tion­al con­tain­ers for use with the Ascent Series blenders – 48 oz Wet, 48 oz Dry, 48 oz Aer Disc, 20 oz Sin­gle Serve Cups, and 8 oz bowls.

Like all Clas­sic and Space Sav­ing con­tain­ers, the Ascent jars are made from tem­per­a­ture-resis­tant, shat­ter­proof, and light­weight Titan BPA-free copoly­ester mate­r­i­al pro­duced by USA East­man Company.

Unlike the Clas­sic and Space Sav­ing mod­els, the Ascent mod­el Self-Detect tech­nol­o­gy allows the Ascent blender base to rec­og­nize the type of con­tain­er and auto­mat­i­cal­ly adjust blend­ing pro­grams and max­i­mum run­ning time depend­ing on con­tain­er type.

Warn­ing 1. The Ascent Series Con­tain­ers are not com­pat­i­ble with the Clas­sic and Space Sav­ing blenders (Explo­ri­an E310, Explo­ri­an 320, 5200, 5300, 6300, 6500, 7500, 780, Aspire Series, Cre­ations Series, Pro­fes­sion­al Series 750, Total Nutri­tion Series, Tur­boBlend Series, S30, S50, S55).

Warn­ing 2. The Vita­mix Ascent Series 110–120 V self–detect 64 oz. Wet, 48 oz Wet, 48 oz Dry, 20 oz. Sin­gle Serve Cup and 8 oz. Bowl con­tain­ers man­u­fac­tured for USA/Canada/Mexico use are not com­pat­i­ble with the 220–240 Ascent Series blenders (since “lid is on” detec­tion hard­ware applies to 110–120 and not to 220–240 volt­age system). 

The range of addi­tion­al con­tain­ers is designed to expand the func­tion­al­i­ty of Vita­mix Ascent blenders. Here, I will talk about the oper­a­tional qual­i­ties of the extra jars and who and how they could ben­e­fit from pur­chas­ing them.

Dis­clo­sure: As an Ama­zon Asso­ciate, we may earn an affil­i­ate com­mis­sion for pur­chas­es you make when using the links on this page.

Vitamix Ascent Wet Containers — 64 oz Wide Bottom and 48 oz Narrow Bottom

The wet con­tain­ers are designed to han­dle the fol­low­ing functions:

• Blend­ing smooth­ies includ­ing green and with ice, whole juices;
• Ice Cream and frozen dessert mak­ing, includ­ing the ice crushing/shaving;
• Whip­ping cream;
• Mix­ing and emul­si­fy­ing sal­ad dress­ing, may­on­naise, pesto, mari­nades, and oth­er tasks;
• Wet and dry chop­ping tasks;
• Pro­cess­ing thick mix­tures like nut but­ter, hum­mus, and others;
• Heat­ing food for such tasks as soup prepar­ing, fon­due, hot choco­lates, and others;
• Mix­ing bat­ters for pan­cakes and oth­ers and knead­ing the dough for bread and pizza.

There are only two WET types of con­tain­ers — 64 oz. and 48 oz. — cur­rent­ly man­u­fac­tured for the Ascent series.

Vitamix Ascent Series Self-Detect 64 oz. Wet Wide Bottom Container

The 64 ounces Wet con­tain­er has a wide bot­tom low pro­file shape and size of 10.2 x 9.6 x 7.4 inches.

It comes with a clear plas­tic lid with 2 ounces capac­i­ty, which per­forms the vent­ing func­tions and could be removed for adding extra ingre­di­ents. In addi­tion, the con­tain­er is equipped with 4″ blades per­ma­nent­ly inbuilt into the con­tain­er, so you do not need to remove them for cleaning.

The 64 ounces con­tain­er has the fol­low­ing advan­tages and disadvantages.

Pros:

• Process large batch­es of food in one cycle of 4–7.5 cups;
• Pro­cess­ing all recipes at a short­er time than 3 “blades containers;
• Less use of tam­per for thick recipes because wider blades cre­ate bet­ter vortex;
• Good at chop­ping large up to 8 cups batch­es of food;

Cons:

• Splash­es a lot for vol­umes less than 4–6 cups;
• Can­not blend liq­uids prop­er­ly of less than 3–4 cups;
• Requires a min­i­mum of 4.5–6 cups vol­umes to process thick recipes for sauces, hum­mus, ice cream, and nut butter.

The con­tain­er comes with three (3) years full war­ran­ty if bought sep­a­rate­ly. How­ev­er, it has a ten (10) years war­ran­ty on all blender parts when it comes to the blender.

It is suit­able for big house­holds that serve 4–7 people.

Vitamix Ascent Series Self-Detect 48 oz. Wet Narrow Bottom Container

There are two types of 48 oz. Wet Blade Nar­row Bot­tom con­tain­ers are avail­able now — made from an East­man Tri­tan Copoly­ester and a Stain­less Steel. Both of them are equipped with the 3″ blades per­ma­nent­ly built into the con­tain­er. It has a size of 6.5 x 8 x 10 inch­es and weighs only 2 lb. The con­tain­ers come with clear plas­tic, a vent­ed lid, and 2 ounces mea­sur­ing cap; the cap can be removed dur­ing blend­ing to add extra ingredients.

The 48 oz Nar­row Bot­tom con­tain­er’s shape and pur­pose are iden­ti­cal to the 64 oz Wide Bot­tom con­tain­er but have a small­er con­tain­er capac­i­ty and small­er blades.

The con­tain­ers have the fol­low­ing pros and cons:

Pros:

• Can effi­cient­ly process 1–6 cups of food;

• Can make recipes with min­i­mum vol­umes of ¾ cups and suit­able for prepar­ing may­on­naise, pesto, sal­ad dress­ing, mari­nades, and others;
• Scram­ble a min­i­mum of two (2) eggs;
• Make thick recipes like ice cream, hum­mus, and nut but­ter from a min­i­mum of 3 cups;
• Do not splash from 1 to 2 cups.

Cons:

• It can han­dle a max­i­mum of 1.5–2 cups to per­form dry chop­ping func­tions and may require run­ning a few cycles for chop­ping big batches.

It can han­dle a min­i­mum of 1 cup of liq­uid ingre­di­ents, so this con­tain­er’s pri­ma­ry pur­pose is to serve 1–4 peo­ple house­holds.  It will per­fect­ly process small to medi­um batch­es of your favorite smooth­ies, soups, frozen desserts, and more. Its petite size allows fit­ting the blender with the 48 oz con­tain­er under any kitchen cabinets.

Vitamix Ascent 48 oz. Narrow Bottom Container vs. 64 oz. Wide Bottom Container

To process ingre­di­ents cor­rect­ly, the Vita­mix jar blades must be entire­ly cov­ered with the food; oth­er­wise, the blades will rotate freely with­out cre­at­ing a vor­tex and splash the food around the jar walls. There­fore, the 64 oz wide bot­tom 4″ blades con­tain­er needs more ingre­di­ents to cov­er the blades than the 48 oz nar­row bot­tom 3″ blades containers.

The table below shows the min­i­mum amount of dif­fer­ent food types that which Vita­mix blender will effi­cient­ly process:

	64 oz.	48 oz.
Liq­uid food	4–7.5 cups	1–5.5 cups
Thick ices cream, nut but­ter, hummus	4.5 – 7.5 cups	2–5 cups
Dough and batter	4.5 ‑7 cups	3–5 cups
Wap­ping cream	1 cup	½ cups
Dry chop­ping	Max­i­mum 8 cups	Max­i­mum 1.5–2 cups

 

All Ascent Series blenders come orig­i­nal­ly only with the wide Bot­tom 64 oz con­tain­ers that are not good at pro­cess­ing small batch­es of food. So, if you are dis­ap­point­ed with the Vita­mix Ascent blend­ing qual­i­ty, need to process a small por­tion of food, or think that the 64 ounces con­tain­er is too big for you, then the 48 ounces con­tain­er will resolve the prob­lem. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the 64 ounces jar is just too big for most of the every­day blend­ing rou­tine, while the 48 ounces con­tain­er is just per­fect for every task you need.

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Vitamix Ascent Series 48 oz. with SELF-DETECT Dry Grains Container

The 48 oz nar­row bot­tom Dry Grains Con­tain­er blades have a dif­fer­ent shape com­pared to the Wet Blades con­tain­ers; they are designed to cre­ate an upward vor­tex dur­ing pro­cess­ing instead of the down­ward vor­tex cre­at­ed by the Wet Blade container.

The upward vor­tex pre­vents par­ti­cles from falling, so they are dis­in­te­grat­ed quick­er and bet­ter while fly­ing in the mid­dle of the jar. The Wet Blade con­tain­er packs the ingre­di­ents around the blade because the par­ti­cles are pushed to the bot­tom by the down­ward vor­tex.

For exam­ple, the Wet Blade con­tain­er will process the nuts into the nut but­ter due to push­ing dis­in­te­grat­ed par­ti­cles down, while the Dry Blade con­tain­er will pow­der them by push­ing them up. The upward vor­tex also does not heat the processed ingre­di­ents as much as the down­ward vor­tex in Wet Blade jars, so you will mill the bet­ter qual­i­ty grain flour in such containers.

As a result, the dry blades jar more effi­cient­ly than the wet blades con­tain­er per­forms the fol­low­ing functions:

• Grinds cof­fee beans;
• Mills grains, seeds, and nuts into flour;
• Kneads bread and piz­za dough and mix­es batter;
• Grates dry cheeses, choco­lates, and nuts.
• Chops Veg­gies.

The same as the wet blades con­tain­er can per­form most of the dry con­tain­er tasks, the dry blades jar is also able to do most of the wet con­tain­er jobs but less effi­cient­ly. For exam­ple, the dry con­tain­er can process smooth­ies, but the result will be much chunki­er than that processed in the wet con­tain­er; it will not process berries seeds and will not make smooth green smoothies.

The down­ward vor­tex’s last point packs dry ingre­di­ents down around the blades and scratch­es a lot of the wet con­tain­er’s bot­tom part. As a result, it will absorb dif­fer­ent smells of processed food like gar­lic and onion, wear out the con­tain­er much quick­er, and look cloudy and at the bottom.

Over­all, if you intend to make a lot of dry blends, the dry con­tain­er might be an excel­lent addi­tion to your kitchen. It will make the milling, grind­ing, and dough knead­ing job more effi­cient and guar­an­tee your wet con­tain­er a longer ser­vice life.

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Vitamix Ascent 20 oz. Blending Cup

Vita­mix Ascent 20 oz. Blend­ing Cup is avail­able in 2 packages:

• Sin­gle-serve blender attach­ment, which includes two (2) 20 oz cups and blades assembly;
• One (1) 20 oz cup only.

Read the full review of Vita­mix Ascent Series 20 oz Blend­ing Cup Starter Kit here.

Vitamix Ascent 8oz. Blending Bowl

Vita­mix Ascent 8oz. Blend­ing Bowls are designed for pro­cess­ing small por­tions of food and are avail­able in two packages:

• Two (2) 8 oz. bowls with stack­able stor­age lids and blades assembly;
• Two (2) 8 oz. bowls only.

Read here in more detail about the Vita­mix Ascent Blend­ing Cup 8 oz. Starter Kit.

Vitamix 48 oz Aer Disc Container

It is designed to per­form the fol­low­ing functions:

• Whip­ping;
• Foam­ing and frothing;
• Emul­si­fy­ing;
• Mud­dling;
• Aquafa­ba

The con­tain­er is com­pat­i­ble with Ascent and Clas­sic Vita­mix mod­els; read the full Vita­mix 48 oz. Aer Disc Con­tain­er review here.

Summary

The Vita­mix blender is an invest­ment itself; is it worth spend­ing more mon­ey to expand your blender’s func­tion­al­i­ty? It depends on your needs.

The Ascent series blenders are the most advanced Vita­mix mod­els; invest­ing in an Ascent machine, you invest in the future because the man­u­fac­tur­er assures it will con­tin­ue to expand the high tech func­tion­al­i­ty of the Ascent series machines.

How­ev­er, many cus­tomers com­plain about the blend­ing qual­i­ty of the Ascent series. The prob­lem is not in the blender itself but in the Wide Bot­tom con­tain­er that is not as good in pro­cess­ing small batch­es of food as nar­row bot­tom con­tain­ers. The pro­cess­ing of small recipes dom­i­nates the aver­age house­hold’s every­day rou­tine. So, buy­ing a Nar­row Bot­tom 48 ounces wet con­tain­er will con­sid­er­ably improve your Vita­mix expe­ri­ence, and it is a worth­while invest­ment almost for any own­er of the Vita­mix Ascent blender.

The dry con­tain­er is not as uni­ver­sal as the 48 oz wet one. There­fore, it is only worth­while to buy if you are an avid cook­er and bak­er and use your Vita­mix often for milling, grind­ing and dough knead­ing tasks.

The sin­gle-serve 20 oz cups and small 8 oz. bowls are very pop­u­lar among Vita­mix cus­tomers, espe­cial­ly those who love the sin­gle-serve bul­let-like blender, which allows you to process your morn­ing smooth­ies in the sin­gle-serve cup and take them on the go. If you buy one of the two Starter kits (8 oz. bowls or 20 oz. cups), it is worth adding the sec­ond one because the blade attach­ments are inter­change­able and addi­tion­al bowls and cups will cost you only a frac­tion of the total set price.

The Air Disc is not the most nec­es­sary con­tain­er, but those who enjoy mak­ing cock­tails and Aquafa­ba recipes will sig­nif­i­cant­ly ben­e­fit from the container.